The entertainment industry was rocked to its core last night, when an off-hand comment by Will Smith during a TV interview to promote his new movie, I Am Legend, revealed that the hilarious bloopers and outtakes at the end of each episode of his hit sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, were largely faked.

Interviewer Martha Voller, of Germany’s K-4 network asked Smith if there had been a lot of fun and games on the set of his latest movie. "Oh sure, it was a blast!" Smith replied, "We were always goofing off". "A bit like in the Fresh Prince?" Voller asked. "Yeah…kinda. Though half the time, we were just doing that stuff for the cameras. A lot of those bloopers weren’t real".

Almost immediately, you could feel the shockwaves rippling throughout the entertainment world, perhaps why only moments later Smith said "Oh no, not really! Of course I’m kidding y'all!", but nobody was fooled.

Further investigation by a blogger from Montreal, who has since been discredited by NBC, outed as gay, possibly a peadophile,and has now mysteriously disappeared, (if you really look around on the web you can still find some of his stuff) revealed that early on in the first series, an episode was being filmed, when Alfonso Ribeiro, the actor who played Carlton, ran through a door too quickly, slipped on a rug and hit his head on the kitchen table.

As he lay on the floor dazed, Smith quipped in his inimitable style "That’s got to hurt!", bringing the eager white crowd to its knees with laughter. The producer on set saw how well it had gone down, and insisted it be added to the end credit sequence to add an extra laugh to the fledgling show.

"The next day", one source who was too frightened to reveal his identity told the blogger, "everyone was going nuts about how funny the blooper was. It totally outshone the show. I don’t think any of us realised what we’d created". However, it did not stop there. A media analyst noted that the blooper had kept people watching to the very end of the show, where normally they would start to flick channels the moment the credits began to roll. This meant that they were more likely to stay with NBC and watch both the advertising break and maybe even the next show.

Thus, the following day, an order came from high up in the corporation that they wanted bloopers to run through the end credits every week. "At first it wasn’t a problem", the mystery source (who may now be dead for all we know) revealed - "the guys were young and making mistakes a lot, and there always seemed to be enough to fill out the 30 seconds. But towards the end of season 2, things had already really changed. They were tight now, the show was slick – there weren’t that many mistakes being made. So people started to pounce on the smallest thing and try and really blow it up. One time James Avery (Philip Banks) coughed in the middle of a line. It really wasn’t that funny. But then Alfonso Ribeiro tried to turn it into some kind of human cough beatbox and then Will started rapping over it. They just about got away with it, but people on set were a little bemused by the whole thing".

But then apparently things just got worse. The source continued: "Soon enough everyone was doing it. If someone remotely fluffed a line, it would be seized upon and forced into something really big. Will would just go off on random tangents, stretching the blooper as far as it would go. I always thought he was hogging the stage, but now I think he was actually being noble - if he went on long enough, that blooper would last the whole credits". (So, next time you rush to judge a scene stealing ham actor, just remember - you don't know all the facts).

More from that source; "Alfonso would pretend to forget lines, James Avery would try and break the set, but the worst of all was poor old Joseph Marcell, the British guy who played Geoffrey. He was a properly trained Shakespearean actor, man! He wouldn’t pretend to fluff his lines for nobody. Then one day some executives paid a visit to him in his dressing room, looking like they meant business, if you know what I mean. Next thing you know, he was tripping over all the place, saying his lines backwards, one time he even started squawking like a chicken and laughing maniacally. It may have been funny for the audience, but I just saw a broken man".

Across the entertainment world as a whole, seismic shockwaves have been felt in the aftermath of Smith's accidental confession and the subsequent fall out. In Britain, "much-loved" entertainer Dennis Norden was said to have turned a ashy, grey colour when told of the news, and within 20 minutes he was found dead. "He just seemed to give up the will to live" said an onlooker. Elsewhere, Steve Penk was taken in for tests, and Terry Wogan ordered to rest up.

It's not clear whether Smith can come back from this scandal. The formerly squeaky clean high topped heart throb had always been seen as a great role model (although he was always outspoken in his criticism of "hardcore dance"), so he may be able to come back, as long as he is humble and contrite in the same vein as Mel Gibson after his anti-semitic ejaculations.

But the real question on everyone's lips in Tinseltown right now - who else has been "out-faking"?!!!!!!!

Only time will tell, but we at Dark Beige have a feeling this one could just be warming up...